The Psychology of the Family

Main menu

Post navigation

Father-Daughter Incest

Do you know that father-daughter incest is the second most common form of incest, only next to brother-sister incest? Daughters are also at higher risk of being sexually abused by their fathers if the father is not the biological father. There are also some fathers who involve all daughters in the abuse as soon as they become physically matured. This phenomenon is not something new to humanity, but it still poses the same controversy, intrigue, and hate to us all. Interestingly, though, the practice of incest are formalized in weddings during the earliest times as endogamy. However, there were some instances in the bible where father-daughter incest happened for a special reason. Lot, the survivor of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, had children from his two daughters. The daughters were the ones who seduced and intoxicated their father to lay with them and bear them children because of fear of aging barren. In the modern times, though, incest is sexual abuse by the father to the daughter/s. No other reasons can be cited on why fathers do this except for sexual pleasure and the feeling of being in control or of being in possession of the daughter/s.

There are many social and moral implications of father-daughter incest. First, it threatens the foundation of the family. Today’s social class organize the community based on the family’s name. Having children from one’s children destroys this foundation. Second, most daughters who were sexually abused by their fathers grow up to develop psychopathologies and mental disorders that seriously threatens the community’s productivity and medical costs. Third, it destroys humanity by itself. Incest is genetically a bad behavior because it increases the possibility of an otherwise rare genetic disease to become dominant and thus affect the genetic makeup of the future generation.